[Illustration: A NIGERIAN HUNTER STALKING GAME WITH THE HEAD OF THE GROUND HORNBILL AFFIXED TO HIS FOREHEAD. (_Copyright._) (_Photo by Mr. E. Firmin._)] Throughout the dry season the trade routes are covered with such caravans and with countless pedestrians in small groups or in twos or threes—I am told by men who have lived here for years and by the natives themselves, that while highway robbery is not unknown, a woman, even unattended (and I saw many such) is invariably safe from molestation—petty traders and itinerant merchants, some coming north loaded with kolas, salt and cloth, others going south with butchers’ provender, potash, cloth, grass, and leather-ware, etc., witness to the intensive internal commerce which for centuries upon centuries has rolled up and down the highways of Nigeria. [Illustration: A TRADING CARAVAN.] CHAPTER V THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE—THE AGRICULTURIST _Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!_ The sonorous tones perforate the mists of sleep, heralding the coming of the dawn. _Ashadu Allah, ila-allahu, ila-allahu!_ Insistent, reverberating through the still, cold air—the night and first hours of the day in these latitudes are often very cold. A pause. Then the unseen voice is again raised, seeming to gather unto itself a passionate appeal as the words of the prayer flow more rapidly. _Ashadu an Muhammad rasul ilahi! Haya-al essalatu! Haya al el falahi! Kad Kamet essalatu!_ Another pause. The myriad stars still shine in the deep purple panoply of the heavens, but their brilliancy grows dimmer. The atmosphere seems infused with a tense expectancy. _Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! La illaha, ila-Allahu, ila-Allahu. Muhammad Rasul ilahi. Salallah aleiheiu, ... Wassalama._ The tones rise triumphant and die away in grave cadence. It thrills inexpressibly does this salute to the omnipotent Creator ringing out over every town and village in the Moslem Hausa States. “God the Greatest! There is no God but _the_ God!” And that closing, “Peace!” It has in it reality. Surely it is a good thing and not a bad thing that African man should be reminded as he quits his couch, and as he returns to it, of an all-presiding, all-pervading, all-comprehending Deity? His fashion may not be our fashion. What of that? How far are we here from the narrow cry of the “Moslem peril”! Whom does this call to God imperil? The people who respond to it and prostrate themselves in the dust at its appeal? Let us be quite sure that our own salvation is secured by our own methods, that the masses of our own people are as vividly conscious of the Omnipotent, as free and happy in their lives, as these Nigerian folk, ere we venture to disturb the solemn acknowledgment and petition that peal forth into the dusk of the Nigerian morn. [Illustration: FRUIT-SELLERS.] [Illustration: WATER-CARRIERS.]